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-rw-r--r--Documentation/dmaengine/00-INDEX8
-rw-r--r--Documentation/dmaengine/client.txt199
-rw-r--r--Documentation/dmaengine/dmatest.txt92
-rw-r--r--Documentation/dmaengine/provider.txt379
4 files changed, 678 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/dmaengine/00-INDEX b/Documentation/dmaengine/00-INDEX
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..07de6573d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/dmaengine/00-INDEX
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+00-INDEX
+ - this file.
+client.txt
+ -the DMA Engine API Guide.
+dmatest.txt
+ - how to compile, configure and use the dmatest system.
+provider.txt
+ - the DMA controller API. \ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/Documentation/dmaengine/client.txt b/Documentation/dmaengine/client.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..11fb87ff6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/dmaengine/client.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,199 @@
+ DMA Engine API Guide
+ ====================
+
+ Vinod Koul <vinod dot koul at intel.com>
+
+NOTE: For DMA Engine usage in async_tx please see:
+ Documentation/crypto/async-tx-api.txt
+
+
+Below is a guide to device driver writers on how to use the Slave-DMA API of the
+DMA Engine. This is applicable only for slave DMA usage only.
+
+The slave DMA usage consists of following steps:
+1. Allocate a DMA slave channel
+2. Set slave and controller specific parameters
+3. Get a descriptor for transaction
+4. Submit the transaction
+5. Issue pending requests and wait for callback notification
+
+1. Allocate a DMA slave channel
+
+ Channel allocation is slightly different in the slave DMA context,
+ client drivers typically need a channel from a particular DMA
+ controller only and even in some cases a specific channel is desired.
+ To request a channel dma_request_channel() API is used.
+
+ Interface:
+ struct dma_chan *dma_request_channel(dma_cap_mask_t mask,
+ dma_filter_fn filter_fn,
+ void *filter_param);
+ where dma_filter_fn is defined as:
+ typedef bool (*dma_filter_fn)(struct dma_chan *chan, void *filter_param);
+
+ The 'filter_fn' parameter is optional, but highly recommended for
+ slave and cyclic channels as they typically need to obtain a specific
+ DMA channel.
+
+ When the optional 'filter_fn' parameter is NULL, dma_request_channel()
+ simply returns the first channel that satisfies the capability mask.
+
+ Otherwise, the 'filter_fn' routine will be called once for each free
+ channel which has a capability in 'mask'. 'filter_fn' is expected to
+ return 'true' when the desired DMA channel is found.
+
+ A channel allocated via this interface is exclusive to the caller,
+ until dma_release_channel() is called.
+
+2. Set slave and controller specific parameters
+
+ Next step is always to pass some specific information to the DMA
+ driver. Most of the generic information which a slave DMA can use
+ is in struct dma_slave_config. This allows the clients to specify
+ DMA direction, DMA addresses, bus widths, DMA burst lengths etc
+ for the peripheral.
+
+ If some DMA controllers have more parameters to be sent then they
+ should try to embed struct dma_slave_config in their controller
+ specific structure. That gives flexibility to client to pass more
+ parameters, if required.
+
+ Interface:
+ int dmaengine_slave_config(struct dma_chan *chan,
+ struct dma_slave_config *config)
+
+ Please see the dma_slave_config structure definition in dmaengine.h
+ for a detailed explanation of the struct members. Please note
+ that the 'direction' member will be going away as it duplicates the
+ direction given in the prepare call.
+
+3. Get a descriptor for transaction
+
+ For slave usage the various modes of slave transfers supported by the
+ DMA-engine are:
+
+ slave_sg - DMA a list of scatter gather buffers from/to a peripheral
+ dma_cyclic - Perform a cyclic DMA operation from/to a peripheral till the
+ operation is explicitly stopped.
+ interleaved_dma - This is common to Slave as well as M2M clients. For slave
+ address of devices' fifo could be already known to the driver.
+ Various types of operations could be expressed by setting
+ appropriate values to the 'dma_interleaved_template' members.
+
+ A non-NULL return of this transfer API represents a "descriptor" for
+ the given transaction.
+
+ Interface:
+ struct dma_async_tx_descriptor *dmaengine_prep_slave_sg(
+ struct dma_chan *chan, struct scatterlist *sgl,
+ unsigned int sg_len, enum dma_data_direction direction,
+ unsigned long flags);
+
+ struct dma_async_tx_descriptor *dmaengine_prep_dma_cyclic(
+ struct dma_chan *chan, dma_addr_t buf_addr, size_t buf_len,
+ size_t period_len, enum dma_data_direction direction);
+
+ struct dma_async_tx_descriptor *dmaengine_prep_interleaved_dma(
+ struct dma_chan *chan, struct dma_interleaved_template *xt,
+ unsigned long flags);
+
+ The peripheral driver is expected to have mapped the scatterlist for
+ the DMA operation prior to calling dmaengine_prep_slave_sg(), and must
+ keep the scatterlist mapped until the DMA operation has completed.
+ The scatterlist must be mapped using the DMA struct device.
+ If a mapping needs to be synchronized later, dma_sync_*_for_*() must be
+ called using the DMA struct device, too.
+ So, normal setup should look like this:
+
+ nr_sg = dma_map_sg(chan->device->dev, sgl, sg_len);
+ if (nr_sg == 0)
+ /* error */
+
+ desc = dmaengine_prep_slave_sg(chan, sgl, nr_sg, direction, flags);
+
+ Once a descriptor has been obtained, the callback information can be
+ added and the descriptor must then be submitted. Some DMA engine
+ drivers may hold a spinlock between a successful preparation and
+ submission so it is important that these two operations are closely
+ paired.
+
+ Note:
+ Although the async_tx API specifies that completion callback
+ routines cannot submit any new operations, this is not the
+ case for slave/cyclic DMA.
+
+ For slave DMA, the subsequent transaction may not be available
+ for submission prior to callback function being invoked, so
+ slave DMA callbacks are permitted to prepare and submit a new
+ transaction.
+
+ For cyclic DMA, a callback function may wish to terminate the
+ DMA via dmaengine_terminate_all().
+
+ Therefore, it is important that DMA engine drivers drop any
+ locks before calling the callback function which may cause a
+ deadlock.
+
+ Note that callbacks will always be invoked from the DMA
+ engines tasklet, never from interrupt context.
+
+4. Submit the transaction
+
+ Once the descriptor has been prepared and the callback information
+ added, it must be placed on the DMA engine drivers pending queue.
+
+ Interface:
+ dma_cookie_t dmaengine_submit(struct dma_async_tx_descriptor *desc)
+
+ This returns a cookie can be used to check the progress of DMA engine
+ activity via other DMA engine calls not covered in this document.
+
+ dmaengine_submit() will not start the DMA operation, it merely adds
+ it to the pending queue. For this, see step 5, dma_async_issue_pending.
+
+5. Issue pending DMA requests and wait for callback notification
+
+ The transactions in the pending queue can be activated by calling the
+ issue_pending API. If channel is idle then the first transaction in
+ queue is started and subsequent ones queued up.
+
+ On completion of each DMA operation, the next in queue is started and
+ a tasklet triggered. The tasklet will then call the client driver
+ completion callback routine for notification, if set.
+
+ Interface:
+ void dma_async_issue_pending(struct dma_chan *chan);
+
+Further APIs:
+
+1. int dmaengine_terminate_all(struct dma_chan *chan)
+
+ This causes all activity for the DMA channel to be stopped, and may
+ discard data in the DMA FIFO which hasn't been fully transferred.
+ No callback functions will be called for any incomplete transfers.
+
+2. int dmaengine_pause(struct dma_chan *chan)
+
+ This pauses activity on the DMA channel without data loss.
+
+3. int dmaengine_resume(struct dma_chan *chan)
+
+ Resume a previously paused DMA channel. It is invalid to resume a
+ channel which is not currently paused.
+
+4. enum dma_status dma_async_is_tx_complete(struct dma_chan *chan,
+ dma_cookie_t cookie, dma_cookie_t *last, dma_cookie_t *used)
+
+ This can be used to check the status of the channel. Please see
+ the documentation in include/linux/dmaengine.h for a more complete
+ description of this API.
+
+ This can be used in conjunction with dma_async_is_complete() and
+ the cookie returned from dmaengine_submit() to check for
+ completion of a specific DMA transaction.
+
+ Note:
+ Not all DMA engine drivers can return reliable information for
+ a running DMA channel. It is recommended that DMA engine users
+ pause or stop (via dmaengine_terminate_all()) the channel before
+ using this API.
diff --git a/Documentation/dmaengine/dmatest.txt b/Documentation/dmaengine/dmatest.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..dd77a81bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/dmaengine/dmatest.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
+ DMA Test Guide
+ ==============
+
+ Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com>
+
+This small document introduces how to test DMA drivers using dmatest module.
+
+ Part 1 - How to build the test module
+
+The menuconfig contains an option that could be found by following path:
+ Device Drivers -> DMA Engine support -> DMA Test client
+
+In the configuration file the option called CONFIG_DMATEST. The dmatest could
+be built as module or inside kernel. Let's consider those cases.
+
+ Part 2 - When dmatest is built as a module...
+
+Example of usage:
+ % modprobe dmatest channel=dma0chan0 timeout=2000 iterations=1 run=1
+
+...or:
+ % modprobe dmatest
+ % echo dma0chan0 > /sys/module/dmatest/parameters/channel
+ % echo 2000 > /sys/module/dmatest/parameters/timeout
+ % echo 1 > /sys/module/dmatest/parameters/iterations
+ % echo 1 > /sys/module/dmatest/parameters/run
+
+...or on the kernel command line:
+
+ dmatest.channel=dma0chan0 dmatest.timeout=2000 dmatest.iterations=1 dmatest.run=1
+
+Hint: available channel list could be extracted by running the following
+command:
+ % ls -1 /sys/class/dma/
+
+Once started a message like "dmatest: Started 1 threads using dma0chan0" is
+emitted. After that only test failure messages are reported until the test
+stops.
+
+Note that running a new test will not stop any in progress test.
+
+The following command returns the state of the test.
+ % cat /sys/module/dmatest/parameters/run
+
+To wait for test completion userpace can poll 'run' until it is false, or use
+the wait parameter. Specifying 'wait=1' when loading the module causes module
+initialization to pause until a test run has completed, while reading
+/sys/module/dmatest/parameters/wait waits for any running test to complete
+before returning. For example, the following scripts wait for 42 tests
+to complete before exiting. Note that if 'iterations' is set to 'infinite' then
+waiting is disabled.
+
+Example:
+ % modprobe dmatest run=1 iterations=42 wait=1
+ % modprobe -r dmatest
+...or:
+ % modprobe dmatest run=1 iterations=42
+ % cat /sys/module/dmatest/parameters/wait
+ % modprobe -r dmatest
+
+ Part 3 - When built-in in the kernel...
+
+The module parameters that is supplied to the kernel command line will be used
+for the first performed test. After user gets a control, the test could be
+re-run with the same or different parameters. For the details see the above
+section "Part 2 - When dmatest is built as a module..."
+
+In both cases the module parameters are used as the actual values for the test
+case. You always could check them at run-time by running
+ % grep -H . /sys/module/dmatest/parameters/*
+
+ Part 4 - Gathering the test results
+
+Test results are printed to the kernel log buffer with the format:
+
+"dmatest: result <channel>: <test id>: '<error msg>' with src_off=<val> dst_off=<val> len=<val> (<err code>)"
+
+Example of output:
+ % dmesg | tail -n 1
+ dmatest: result dma0chan0-copy0: #1: No errors with src_off=0x7bf dst_off=0x8ad len=0x3fea (0)
+
+The message format is unified across the different types of errors. A number in
+the parens represents additional information, e.g. error code, error counter,
+or status. A test thread also emits a summary line at completion listing the
+number of tests executed, number that failed, and a result code.
+
+Example:
+ % dmesg | tail -n 1
+ dmatest: dma0chan0-copy0: summary 1 test, 0 failures 1000 iops 100000 KB/s (0)
+
+The details of a data miscompare error are also emitted, but do not follow the
+above format.
diff --git a/Documentation/dmaengine/provider.txt b/Documentation/dmaengine/provider.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..05d228019
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/dmaengine/provider.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,379 @@
+DMAengine controller documentation
+==================================
+
+Hardware Introduction
++++++++++++++++++++++
+
+Most of the Slave DMA controllers have the same general principles of
+operations.
+
+They have a given number of channels to use for the DMA transfers, and
+a given number of requests lines.
+
+Requests and channels are pretty much orthogonal. Channels can be used
+to serve several to any requests. To simplify, channels are the
+entities that will be doing the copy, and requests what endpoints are
+involved.
+
+The request lines actually correspond to physical lines going from the
+DMA-eligible devices to the controller itself. Whenever the device
+will want to start a transfer, it will assert a DMA request (DRQ) by
+asserting that request line.
+
+A very simple DMA controller would only take into account a single
+parameter: the transfer size. At each clock cycle, it would transfer a
+byte of data from one buffer to another, until the transfer size has
+been reached.
+
+That wouldn't work well in the real world, since slave devices might
+require a specific number of bits to be transferred in a single
+cycle. For example, we may want to transfer as much data as the
+physical bus allows to maximize performances when doing a simple
+memory copy operation, but our audio device could have a narrower FIFO
+that requires data to be written exactly 16 or 24 bits at a time. This
+is why most if not all of the DMA controllers can adjust this, using a
+parameter called the transfer width.
+
+Moreover, some DMA controllers, whenever the RAM is used as a source
+or destination, can group the reads or writes in memory into a buffer,
+so instead of having a lot of small memory accesses, which is not
+really efficient, you'll get several bigger transfers. This is done
+using a parameter called the burst size, that defines how many single
+reads/writes it's allowed to do without the controller splitting the
+transfer into smaller sub-transfers.
+
+Our theoretical DMA controller would then only be able to do transfers
+that involve a single contiguous block of data. However, some of the
+transfers we usually have are not, and want to copy data from
+non-contiguous buffers to a contiguous buffer, which is called
+scatter-gather.
+
+DMAEngine, at least for mem2dev transfers, require support for
+scatter-gather. So we're left with two cases here: either we have a
+quite simple DMA controller that doesn't support it, and we'll have to
+implement it in software, or we have a more advanced DMA controller,
+that implements in hardware scatter-gather.
+
+The latter are usually programmed using a collection of chunks to
+transfer, and whenever the transfer is started, the controller will go
+over that collection, doing whatever we programmed there.
+
+This collection is usually either a table or a linked list. You will
+then push either the address of the table and its number of elements,
+or the first item of the list to one channel of the DMA controller,
+and whenever a DRQ will be asserted, it will go through the collection
+to know where to fetch the data from.
+
+Either way, the format of this collection is completely dependent on
+your hardware. Each DMA controller will require a different structure,
+but all of them will require, for every chunk, at least the source and
+destination addresses, whether it should increment these addresses or
+not and the three parameters we saw earlier: the burst size, the
+transfer width and the transfer size.
+
+The one last thing is that usually, slave devices won't issue DRQ by
+default, and you have to enable this in your slave device driver first
+whenever you're willing to use DMA.
+
+These were just the general memory-to-memory (also called mem2mem) or
+memory-to-device (mem2dev) kind of transfers. Most devices often
+support other kind of transfers or memory operations that dmaengine
+support and will be detailed later in this document.
+
+DMA Support in Linux
+++++++++++++++++++++
+
+Historically, DMA controller drivers have been implemented using the
+async TX API, to offload operations such as memory copy, XOR,
+cryptography, etc., basically any memory to memory operation.
+
+Over time, the need for memory to device transfers arose, and
+dmaengine was extended. Nowadays, the async TX API is written as a
+layer on top of dmaengine, and acts as a client. Still, dmaengine
+accommodates that API in some cases, and made some design choices to
+ensure that it stayed compatible.
+
+For more information on the Async TX API, please look the relevant
+documentation file in Documentation/crypto/async-tx-api.txt.
+
+DMAEngine Registration
+++++++++++++++++++++++
+
+struct dma_device Initialization
+--------------------------------
+
+Just like any other kernel framework, the whole DMAEngine registration
+relies on the driver filling a structure and registering against the
+framework. In our case, that structure is dma_device.
+
+The first thing you need to do in your driver is to allocate this
+structure. Any of the usual memory allocators will do, but you'll also
+need to initialize a few fields in there:
+
+ * channels: should be initialized as a list using the
+ INIT_LIST_HEAD macro for example
+
+ * src_addr_widths:
+ - should contain a bitmask of the supported source transfer width
+
+ * dst_addr_widths:
+ - should contain a bitmask of the supported destination transfer
+ width
+
+ * directions:
+ - should contain a bitmask of the supported slave directions
+ (i.e. excluding mem2mem transfers)
+
+ * residue_granularity:
+ - Granularity of the transfer residue reported to dma_set_residue.
+ - This can be either:
+ + Descriptor
+ -> Your device doesn't support any kind of residue
+ reporting. The framework will only know that a particular
+ transaction descriptor is done.
+ + Segment
+ -> Your device is able to report which chunks have been
+ transferred
+ + Burst
+ -> Your device is able to report which burst have been
+ transferred
+
+ * dev: should hold the pointer to the struct device associated
+ to your current driver instance.
+
+Supported transaction types
+---------------------------
+
+The next thing you need is to set which transaction types your device
+(and driver) supports.
+
+Our dma_device structure has a field called cap_mask that holds the
+various types of transaction supported, and you need to modify this
+mask using the dma_cap_set function, with various flags depending on
+transaction types you support as an argument.
+
+All those capabilities are defined in the dma_transaction_type enum,
+in include/linux/dmaengine.h
+
+Currently, the types available are:
+ * DMA_MEMCPY
+ - The device is able to do memory to memory copies
+
+ * DMA_XOR
+ - The device is able to perform XOR operations on memory areas
+ - Used to accelerate XOR intensive tasks, such as RAID5
+
+ * DMA_XOR_VAL
+ - The device is able to perform parity check using the XOR
+ algorithm against a memory buffer.
+
+ * DMA_PQ
+ - The device is able to perform RAID6 P+Q computations, P being a
+ simple XOR, and Q being a Reed-Solomon algorithm.
+
+ * DMA_PQ_VAL
+ - The device is able to perform parity check using RAID6 P+Q
+ algorithm against a memory buffer.
+
+ * DMA_INTERRUPT
+ - The device is able to trigger a dummy transfer that will
+ generate periodic interrupts
+ - Used by the client drivers to register a callback that will be
+ called on a regular basis through the DMA controller interrupt
+
+ * DMA_SG
+ - The device supports memory to memory scatter-gather
+ transfers.
+ - Even though a plain memcpy can look like a particular case of a
+ scatter-gather transfer, with a single chunk to transfer, it's a
+ distinct transaction type in the mem2mem transfers case
+
+ * DMA_PRIVATE
+ - The devices only supports slave transfers, and as such isn't
+ available for async transfers.
+
+ * DMA_ASYNC_TX
+ - Must not be set by the device, and will be set by the framework
+ if needed
+ - /* TODO: What is it about? */
+
+ * DMA_SLAVE
+ - The device can handle device to memory transfers, including
+ scatter-gather transfers.
+ - While in the mem2mem case we were having two distinct types to
+ deal with a single chunk to copy or a collection of them, here,
+ we just have a single transaction type that is supposed to
+ handle both.
+ - If you want to transfer a single contiguous memory buffer,
+ simply build a scatter list with only one item.
+
+ * DMA_CYCLIC
+ - The device can handle cyclic transfers.
+ - A cyclic transfer is a transfer where the chunk collection will
+ loop over itself, with the last item pointing to the first.
+ - It's usually used for audio transfers, where you want to operate
+ on a single ring buffer that you will fill with your audio data.
+
+ * DMA_INTERLEAVE
+ - The device supports interleaved transfer.
+ - These transfers can transfer data from a non-contiguous buffer
+ to a non-contiguous buffer, opposed to DMA_SLAVE that can
+ transfer data from a non-contiguous data set to a continuous
+ destination buffer.
+ - It's usually used for 2d content transfers, in which case you
+ want to transfer a portion of uncompressed data directly to the
+ display to print it
+
+These various types will also affect how the source and destination
+addresses change over time.
+
+Addresses pointing to RAM are typically incremented (or decremented)
+after each transfer. In case of a ring buffer, they may loop
+(DMA_CYCLIC). Addresses pointing to a device's register (e.g. a FIFO)
+are typically fixed.
+
+Device operations
+-----------------
+
+Our dma_device structure also requires a few function pointers in
+order to implement the actual logic, now that we described what
+operations we were able to perform.
+
+The functions that we have to fill in there, and hence have to
+implement, obviously depend on the transaction types you reported as
+supported.
+
+ * device_alloc_chan_resources
+ * device_free_chan_resources
+ - These functions will be called whenever a driver will call
+ dma_request_channel or dma_release_channel for the first/last
+ time on the channel associated to that driver.
+ - They are in charge of allocating/freeing all the needed
+ resources in order for that channel to be useful for your
+ driver.
+ - These functions can sleep.
+
+ * device_prep_dma_*
+ - These functions are matching the capabilities you registered
+ previously.
+ - These functions all take the buffer or the scatterlist relevant
+ for the transfer being prepared, and should create a hardware
+ descriptor or a list of hardware descriptors from it
+ - These functions can be called from an interrupt context
+ - Any allocation you might do should be using the GFP_NOWAIT
+ flag, in order not to potentially sleep, but without depleting
+ the emergency pool either.
+ - Drivers should try to pre-allocate any memory they might need
+ during the transfer setup at probe time to avoid putting to
+ much pressure on the nowait allocator.
+
+ - It should return a unique instance of the
+ dma_async_tx_descriptor structure, that further represents this
+ particular transfer.
+
+ - This structure can be initialized using the function
+ dma_async_tx_descriptor_init.
+ - You'll also need to set two fields in this structure:
+ + flags:
+ TODO: Can it be modified by the driver itself, or
+ should it be always the flags passed in the arguments
+
+ + tx_submit: A pointer to a function you have to implement,
+ that is supposed to push the current
+ transaction descriptor to a pending queue, waiting
+ for issue_pending to be called.
+
+ * device_issue_pending
+ - Takes the first transaction descriptor in the pending queue,
+ and starts the transfer. Whenever that transfer is done, it
+ should move to the next transaction in the list.
+ - This function can be called in an interrupt context
+
+ * device_tx_status
+ - Should report the bytes left to go over on the given channel
+ - Should only care about the transaction descriptor passed as
+ argument, not the currently active one on a given channel
+ - The tx_state argument might be NULL
+ - Should use dma_set_residue to report it
+ - In the case of a cyclic transfer, it should only take into
+ account the current period.
+ - This function can be called in an interrupt context.
+
+ * device_config
+ - Reconfigures the channel with the configuration given as
+ argument
+ - This command should NOT perform synchronously, or on any
+ currently queued transfers, but only on subsequent ones
+ - In this case, the function will receive a dma_slave_config
+ structure pointer as an argument, that will detail which
+ configuration to use.
+ - Even though that structure contains a direction field, this
+ field is deprecated in favor of the direction argument given to
+ the prep_* functions
+ - This call is mandatory for slave operations only. This should NOT be
+ set or expected to be set for memcpy operations.
+ If a driver support both, it should use this call for slave
+ operations only and not for memcpy ones.
+
+ * device_pause
+ - Pauses a transfer on the channel
+ - This command should operate synchronously on the channel,
+ pausing right away the work of the given channel
+
+ * device_resume
+ - Resumes a transfer on the channel
+ - This command should operate synchronously on the channel,
+ pausing right away the work of the given channel
+
+ * device_terminate_all
+ - Aborts all the pending and ongoing transfers on the channel
+ - This command should operate synchronously on the channel,
+ terminating right away all the channels
+
+Misc notes (stuff that should be documented, but don't really know
+where to put them)
+------------------------------------------------------------------
+ * dma_run_dependencies
+ - Should be called at the end of an async TX transfer, and can be
+ ignored in the slave transfers case.
+ - Makes sure that dependent operations are run before marking it
+ as complete.
+
+ * dma_cookie_t
+ - it's a DMA transaction ID that will increment over time.
+ - Not really relevant any more since the introduction of virt-dma
+ that abstracts it away.
+
+ * DMA_CTRL_ACK
+ - Undocumented feature
+ - No one really has an idea of what it's about, besides being
+ related to reusing the DMA transaction descriptors or having
+ additional transactions added to it in the async-tx API
+ - Useless in the case of the slave API
+
+General Design Notes
+--------------------
+
+Most of the DMAEngine drivers you'll see are based on a similar design
+that handles the end of transfer interrupts in the handler, but defer
+most work to a tasklet, including the start of a new transfer whenever
+the previous transfer ended.
+
+This is a rather inefficient design though, because the inter-transfer
+latency will be not only the interrupt latency, but also the
+scheduling latency of the tasklet, which will leave the channel idle
+in between, which will slow down the global transfer rate.
+
+You should avoid this kind of practice, and instead of electing a new
+transfer in your tasklet, move that part to the interrupt handler in
+order to have a shorter idle window (that we can't really avoid
+anyway).
+
+Glossary
+--------
+
+Burst: A number of consecutive read or write operations
+ that can be queued to buffers before being flushed to
+ memory.
+Chunk: A contiguous collection of bursts
+Transfer: A collection of chunks (be it contiguous or not)